L.A. County population pushes past 10 million, highest in nation

Hundreds of cyclists crowd the disembark and walk zone during last year's CicLAvia in Los Angeles. L.A. County is now the populous county in the country.

Hundreds of cyclists crowd the disembark and walk zone during last year's CicLAvia in Los Angeles. L.A. County is now the populous county in the country. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Emily Alpert Reyes

The population of Los Angeles County has edged past 10 million -- a new high for the most populous county in the United States, according to just-released estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

As of July, the county was estimated to have a whopping 10,017,068 residents. That’s nearly twice as many as the next largest: Cook County in Illinois, which had an estimated 5,240,700 people.

Though Los Angeles has the biggest population by far, it isn’t among the fastest growing counties in the U.S., many of which are in oil- and gas-producing areas in and around the Great Plains.

While such rapidly growing counties boosted their populations by 4% or more, Los Angeles County grew less than 0.7% in population between July 2012 and July 2013, according to the new estimates.

Part of what prodded Los Angeles County past the 10-million mark was an influx of people from abroad.

Compared with other counties across the country, Los Angeles County had the highest net number of international migrants between 2012 and 2013 -- 39,000 people -- compared with 32,000 in Florida’s Miami-Dade County and 24,000 in New York’s Queens County, according to the Census Bureau estimates.